


dis manibus sacrum

by sheepfulsheepyard



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Episode Tag, Extensive Talk of Death and Grieving, Legacy Pain™, Post-Legacy (Star Wars), gratuitous Latin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 12:49:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5627212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheepfulsheepyard/pseuds/sheepfulsheepyard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>def.: literally "sacred to the ghost-gods." Refers to the Manes, Roman spirits of the dead. Loosely "to the memory of."</p>
<p>Tag to Legacy. Afterwards, the Bridgers need a funeral - not for them, but for Ezra. And the Ghost crew helps Ezra mourn in different ways - plus one time Ezra helps them grieve, too. No pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dis manibus sacrum

* * *

 

1\. _fui quod es, eris quod sum_ : def.: "I once was what you are, you will be what I am."

* * *

 When the _Ghost_ arrives on Lothal, Ezra and Kanan are building a pyre. 

Well, they’re trying to, anyway, but Lothal’s a treeless planet and the closest thing Ezra had ever seen to one before leaving the planet were the three-yard tall grasses that ran across the equator. But Capitol City’s far north, almost near the poles, so they have to make do with the bristly golden scrub that barely scratches at their knees.

A few steps from the _Phantom_ Ezra and Kanan’s work is piling up (even Chopper’s helping); it looks like a pathetically lopsided grass-castle at first, but as the moons set, it’s grown to a respectable size. When the _Ghost_ touches down next to the _Phantom,_ the sky is the darkest it will get before the dawn and Hera, Sabine, and Zeb troop out silently, only glancing at the pile before they join Kanan and Ezra in their harvest.

As Ezra grapples with each blade of grass that stubbornly clings to the ground, he remembers stories his mother used to tell of him of the ancient people who lived on Lothal before Lothal had even known its own name, much less the names of the stars in the skies and the other planets that revolved around them. They would weave the grasses into mats, baskets, and jars so sturdy they were waterproof and airtight, his mother would whisper in his ear as they sat on their picnic blanket, planes and sky stretching farther than the eye could see. Ezra and his mother would try to weave together little chains of bracelets, failing miserably until his father took pity on them with a laugh and, with deft hands, do it for them.

Tears burn his eyes, tracing down his cheeks before the wind brushes them away with a gentle hand. It’s _unfair,_ Ezra thinks, because not only did he race half-way across the galaxy, hope seared in his heart and “Mom” and “Dad” on his lips, but because he can _see_ them - not in a vision, but he can see them _here._ He can _see_ the faint smile on Dad’s lips as he stretches out across their picnic blanket, arms behind his back as he gazes at the streaks of white clouds, half-listening to Mom wrestle Ezra down onto the ground for another sandwich. He can _see_ the way Mom’s eyes crinkle and shift across a kaleidoscope of blues in the summer sun. And he can _hear_ his father’s laugh, he can _hear_ his mother’s heartbeat as he curls against her chest, in between the two of them - he can smell Mom’s perfume and Dad’s aftershave, Mom’s lipstick that lingered on his cheeks after a kiss, the tug of Dad struggling to comb his hair - things that smell so much like home and are so far away. 

But, just for a second - just for a _second_ \- they were close enough to touch. 

_It’s unfair_ , Ezra thinks, but that doesn’t really begin to cover the depths of what it really is. 

Under the dim glow of the stars, Ezra tugs at grass after grass. Some come away easily, others he yanks at until his hands ache. With each one he gathers and adds to their pyre, memories become clearer. Not memories of today, or of his vision, or of the last eight years of hiding away and hating, or of that night of screaming and fearing, but of Mom and Dad - little things, things he had forgotten. Dad’s favorite cufflinks - ones Ezra had picked out, Mom’s favorite holomag, the way Dad had proudly tacked up each one of Ezra’s drawings in his office, the look on Mom’s face when his teacher informed them had he had shoved a kid named Lac when he was six and the secretive grin she gave him when he protested that Lac had been picking of Aj, so of course he pushed him. 

With each hard tug of grass a little of his helpless rage at the Empire melts and, upon overturning some new earth, a new memory surfaces that Ezra folds up and tucks away, branding it with a promise to remember to the point that he couldn’t help up but smile a little, even as his tears freeze on his face.

When Kanan gently puts a hand on him to stop, gesturing at the pyre that’s now as tall as Ezra; he’s numb and exhausted, sort of hollow and sort of full. Kanan flicks a switch on whatever Sabine passed him, sparking a little flame, and rests it Ezra’s hands. Kanan rests his arm across his shoulders, drawing Ezra in, who’s cupping the flame in the palm of his hands.

"Life has turned to death," Kanan draws a hand from the rolling hills of Lothal to their unlit pyre of plains grasses before nodding at Ezra, "and now…"

Ezra took a few shaky steps forward to drop Sabine’s piece onto the pyre. It burst into brilliance, slapping the six with heat and illuminating even the darkest shadows on their faces; first a plume of white shot up, succeeded by wreath of flickering blue that sparks with licks of the soft gold of Lothal’s daytime sky. 

"We give death back to life," Kanan continues, putting his hands on Ezra’s shoulders as he steps back from the pyre. "The wind will carry the ashes across the plains and nourish the soil and, when it rains, there will be new life, just as great and brilliant as the old, but no less important."

They all watch the fire burn brightly but quickly, grass giving to the flames much faster than wood. As the last embers peter out, the first of the sun’s rays stretch out across the sky. Just before the board the _Ghost_ , Ezra takes a step closer to pyre, Kanan’s hands dropping from his shoulders.

"Thank you," Ezra says quietly, not quite sure who he’s talking to, but he doesn’t know what else to say. 

The others seem to know, though, and they smile; Hera shakes her head slightly, Chopper gives him a derisive beep, Sabine and Zeb both give the pyre, or maybe Ezra, a warrior’s salute, and Kanan simply stokes the flames with the Force one last time.

As the rest troop back, Ezra slowly turns around, taking one last glance at the pyre when, suddenly, there’s a gentle wind that brushes his hair behind his ears and douses the flames with a soft touch.

And, maybe, Ezra thinks, this is what his parents wanted. 

* * *

 2. _nil igitur mors set ad dos_ : def.: "death, therefore, is nothing to us."

* * *

 It’s only a few days later when the land on some awful planet in the back-end of nowhere when scouting for a Rebellion base. Somehow, they’d managed to land on the hottest rock in the galaxy that wasn’t a sun and even that was probably debatable. Between Zeb’s fur, Chopper’s circuitry, and Sabine’s armor and Kanan and Ezra’s complete lack of wanting to brave temperatures with three numerals, the five of them had been hanging out in front of the cooling vents on the _Ghost_ after Hera had declared them wimps and gone on ahead regardless.

Nighttime was falling as Hera made her way back to the _Ghost_ and, _finally,_ temperatures were slipping back down to human-ish standards. Still closer to three digits than Ezra would like, which is why he groans miserably when Hera calls across the comm for him to meet her at the ramp. 

Dragging himself there as slowly as possible with Zeb and Sabine snickering behind him, Ezra’s more than a little surprised that, when he finally reaches the ramp, Hera’s there with her hands on her hips, boots off, pants rolled up, and the top of her flight suit hanging around her waist, revealing a thin shift underneath.

"Um?" is all Ezra gets to ask before Hera’s tugging off his boots. 

As soon as Ezra’s in similar apparel, wincing at that hot, dusty rock underneath his feet, Hera suddenly yanks on his hands, pulling him around in a circle, feet slapping in a fast beat as lekku swing behind her to the same tempo.

"Um, what?" Ezra manages to get out as he barely manages avoiding a face-plant on the stone when Hera spins them both in the opposite direction.

"We’re dancing!" answers Hera with a laugh and Ezra can’t help but grin a little, too, as Hera nudges one of his feet into the air to allow her to twist him opposite for her.

"Any reason why?" Ezra asks with a bit of laugh as well, because it’s hard not to when Hera’s jumping from foot to foot, twirling in the air, and, of course, dragging him along for the ride. 

"This planet reminds me of Ryloth, my home planet," Hera sends him out into a turn all his own before he’s suddenly spinning back into meet her, for once matching her steps with his own - Ezra thinks he’s picking up on the pattern here. "It’s a little cooler here than it is on Ryloth, but this time of day would have been perfect for dancing."

Ezra lets out a surprised squeak when Hera suddenly lifts him in the air, throwing him up so he land on his feet. 

"I didn’t know you liked to dance!"

"Dancing is traditional on Ryloth," answers Hera, not even out of breath as she suddenly kicks the pace up, doubling the speed, leading Ezra and herself spinning at the waist, counterclockwise from each other, her lekku and his hair flying. "We dance for everything and have a dance for every occasion. Why do you think all the dancing girls are Twi’leks? It’s for both males and females, but you can see which ones the galaxy chose to export. Anyway," she continues, not letting him answer as she grasps Ezra’s forearms so she can take them sashaying one way and then the next before suddenly switching them so they’re back-to-back without missing a beat. "I haven’t gotten to do this in forever…on Ryloth, for holidays, families go dancing together - all of the family! Nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, third cousins - anyone and everyone! Your family and clan name mean everything on Ryloth."

"How," Ezra wheezes as he tries to copy Hera’s double-stepping, hand-holding, aerial spin maneuver, "are - you - _talking?"_

Hera grins and slows down - only slightly. Enough to somehow incorporate a backflip into a partner twirl, still dragging Ezra along. 

"I learned this dance - and many, _many_ more as a kid. Some dances are traditional to clans," Hera continues, this time fitting Ezra into a cartwheel while their arms are interlocked, "my clan - the Syndulla clan - is an old family with a long tradition from the curia caste - the highest caste on Ryloth," Hera answers, somehow spotting Ezra’s confusion in the midst of engaging in him a series of steps that included interlocking ankles at four times the speed. "We have special, very elaborate dances for births, weddings, adoptions, funerals…you pass your dance down from parent to child within the clan.

"And since," Hera says, pairing it with a wicked spin that almost gave Ezra whiplash, "you are _my_ family, I thought you should know the funerary dance of _my_ clan."

Hera suddenly slows down until both of them are simply holding hands and pacing around each other, almost like circling Loth-cats. 

"What do you think?" she asks gently. "We don't have to if you don't want to."

"No," Ezra struggles through the words. His throat is dry and tongue feels woolly in his mouth. He'd like to say it was from the humid, dusty air, but it isn't, and Ezra knows it. Just like he knows that the _Ghost_ crew isn't going to let him shove anything the rug and let him tell them that he had thought his parents were dead for years before and it shouldn't really matter. 

But it does, it shouldn't, _it shouldn't,_ but it _does._

"Alright, then," Hera says with a decisive nod and distinct glimmer of steel in her eyes that makes Ezra think this wasn't a choice to begin with. She begins the steps of the dance again, pulling him in a circle slowly this time and letting him copy the taps of her feet.

While they dance, Hera tells him the story of life and death and how their bodies mimic it, unfold it, and retell it for all to know. The beginning steps of the dance aren't gentle, they're fast and riotous because life doesn't begin with a whisper, it begins with a bang. It begins to get faster, stranger, crazier; Hera and Ezra jump and twirl somehow both in sync even though Ezra's _sure_ there are steps in the dance that weren't there before: life continues, Hera shouts to him over the pounding of their hearts and the giddy laughter as they trip and stumble a little. Life continues and it picks up pace, because life stops for no one and as they stumble and fall, that's the beauty of it; life's glory is not in perfection but in imperfection and what's imperfect, Ezra? What flaws and faults do you remember?

Hera doesn't let him answer, though, as they speed up into a spin, flying away from each other before coming back. 

"We do no duties to the dead by making them saints," Hera tells him as she tells of her father; a man with a great many victories to his name as well as a great number of flaws. "The dead were never saints. We remember them as they were. We remember them as people."

The force of their spin nearly sends them to the ground, but Hera grabs him at the last moment, picking him up and throwing him, to let him grow his wings and land back on his feet with a grin and bow, because there's something fun about this whole thing - Ezra feels like he's reliving all of his best memories of his parents with each flawless twist and turn and every worst one with each stumble, but each time Hera's there to pick him up and they keep moving; keep spinning and flying - and Hera gives him a mock curtsy before they're arm-and-arm in a leap that separates them for the ground for long enough that Ezra knows what it means to fly with a full heart weighed down by love and by grief.

And as they come back down, Hera wraps her arms around him and pulls him close to her chest, letting Ezra bury his head her shoulder as they spin in a slow circle. There's something so warm and comforting about Hera; she's as much home as Kanan is, but while his eyes feel wet, he's laughing in sort of carefree way as he tells her about how his father refused to ever lose an argument and his mother had had a stubborn sort of pride that drove him as crazy as much as he admired it.

"People live and die in our memories," Hera whispers to him as Ezra's exhausted but happy, on the verge of falling into a sleep more peaceful than any he'd had in nights right on Hera's shoulder. "As we dance, we remember all those who come before us. We remember and they live in death as they do in life."

* * *

 3. _morior invictus_ : def.: "I die unvanquished."

* * *

  _Note to self_ , Ezra thinks miserably as he scrubbed more ion scoring off the _Phantom. Never complain about being bored while Hera's around._

Not his best move, but in his defense, he'd thought Hera was in the cockpit, not standing behind Zeb. And because he'd said it, no one else was around to help him. He'd take even Chopper's company at this point, but almost the entire crew of the _Ghost_ was somewhere else on the base in secret Rebellion business. Ezra isn't too bothered, considering he'd discovered that a lot of "Rebellion business" is meetings about where to get food, where to hide food, where to sleep, etcetera. Not that he minds those things, but he'd rather be _doing_ it than _planning_ it. 

Their new make-shift base isn't great, either: Singsang was heavily industrialized planet covered in smog and skyscrapers. Not really the most inviting place to a kid who'd grown up on a treeless, mountainless, and smogless planet. 

So, yeah. Ezra's glad he's not out there, but could do with some company.

Almost as soon as he thinks it, Sabine rounds the corner into the hangar and is, thank the stars, making a bee-line toward him.

"Sabine!" Ezra calls as soon as she's in range. (Rebellion apparently doesn't like people shouting out identities of their agents.) "Are you here to free me? Please?"

"Sort of," says Sabine, taking off her helmet and revealing her grin. "Chopper's coming to do it, but you have to clean the cooling vents for him. _And_ you're coming with me."

"Deal," Ezra agrees, because even if Sabine's going to use him as target practice, at least it isn't _ion scoring._ "Where are we going?"

"The _Ghost_." Sabine waits until Ezra's dropped cloth before she heads off, letting Ezra scramble after her. "I've got a new project I'm working on that I want your help with."

Ezra immediately steps away from her. "You can't dye my hair!"

"You lack _vision_ ," Sabine complains as they make their way up the _Ghost's_ docking ramp. "A blue-to-orange ombre would match your flightsuit _and_ your eyes."

"Um, yeah, that's why you're not dying my hair. I don't need to match my clothes."

Sabine sniffed in disapproval before pushing him through to the living area. She'd already covered the chairs and tables with plastic and primed the wall behind the eating nook, paint cans already sitting on the dejarik table.

"I don't think Hera's gonna like this," Ezra grimaces, raising a hand to run through his hair. "I'm _already_ in trouble, remember?"

Sabine waves a dismissive hand. "She'll be fine. Anyway, she'll like this one." Sabine suddenly hesitates, throwing Ezra off guard, before she turned to face him.

"On Mandalore," Sabine begins, her posture unconsciously straightening, "every Mandalorian is a warrior. It doesn't matter what you do: a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher - you dedicate yourself to some battle in some way. After a Mandalorian warrior dies - well, nowadays, it doesn't really matter how they're buried. But it _does_ matter that their victories in battle are commemorated. During the ancient days of Mandalore, when everyone was an literal warrior, tombs would be built and painted with scenes of all their victories in battle and spoils of war…your parents were warriors, too, fighting for what they believed in, and they taught you well," Sabine says, looking Ezra directly in the eyes like daring him to say otherwise. 

"Since they don't have a tomb, I thought that we could commemorate them here," she gestures to the wall behind her. "I don't want to do any pictorial and Hera says we can't do anything to obvious anti-Imperial if we're searched, but I did some searching, found the transcripts of some of your parents' broadcasts - I was thinking - well," Sabine hesitates again and it's really disturbing to Ezra to confident, self-assured Sabine looking so out of place. "Only if you want to, of course."

Wanted to? Absolutely. The idea of having something concrete of his parents, of having something _there_ when he didn't even know whether or not their bodies had been buried - and for Sabine, of all people, to lend her artistic talent…that was _awesome,_ to think that there'd be a memorial to his parents, their words immortalized, even if it was a _secret_ memorial.

"No," Ezra assures her, "I'd like that - I'd _love_ that. What were you thinking?"

Sabine grins and she's back to her old self, face lighting up with a passion as she expands on her idea. Soon enough, they've got Lothal and its sun and two moons outlined and are digging through maps to put the stars in the correct positions around them. Sabine pulls out some sort of lens from somewhere and, with it, they painstakingly paint out each letter of three speeches - one onto each moon and one on Lothal itself. Each letter is as small as a stitch in fabric, varying shades and colors so that, when Ezra steps out, all he can see is clouds swirling over Lothal's continents and seas and the craters on Lothal's moons against the dark field of space interrupted only by tiny pinpricks of stars - each star is one letter and when strung out, spell out his parents' names. But when Ezra moves on to the sun, Sabine stops him with a hand on his shoulder, before pulling out a different holodisc and placing it Ezra's hand.

When it lights up, it's a transcript of _Ezra's_ speech. Ezra stares at her, confused.

"Lothal and its moons rotate around the sun, don't they?" asks Sabine with a sad smile.

And, suddenly, Ezra's knees feel weak and his vision's going a little black. He thinks he's gonna pass out, right then and there, before Sabine puts a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"They never should have seen that," Ezra mutters, angrily wiping away tears. "It's what got them _killed._ "

"Hey," Sabine says sharply, putting a hand on Ezra's other shoulder so she can pull him around to face her. " _No one_ killed your parents but your parents' killers, do you understand me? Not you, not your mom, not your dad - not anyone, you hear?"

Ezra clenches jaw, hands balling into fists.

"You were carrying on your parents' fight, Ezra," Sabine continues, taking a hand to force him to look her in the eyes. "Everything you did you chose to do because you were doing what is _right_ and what your parents wanted - I know, for a _fact,_ that they could not be more proud of you if they _tried._ Why did they rally everyone in the prison to escape? They rallied them because they're your _parents,_ Ezra, just like you're their _son._ They chose to do what they felt they had to do. You would have done nothing else in that situation. 

"I know that it hurts. I know that I don't understand. But I know that your parents would _never_ blame you and would _never_ want you to blame yourself. Don't dishonor them that way," Sabine says, a touch harshly, but with all the conviction of a warrior. "Through you, their fight to freedom lives on. That's why they rallied, Ezra, they heard you and they heard you carry it onward. I _know_ that they could not have been more then when they heard that message."

"Are you - " Ezra chokes out in a small voice, sounding terribly, ridiculously desperate for someone to tell him that he's not his parents' murderers, "are you _sure_?"

"Of course I am," Sabine says, gripping his shoulders even tighter. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Ezra strangles another sob in his throat and Sabine lets him, keeping a hand one shoulder. She doesn't say anything, just stands there, on guard, and when he's ready, she hands him a paint brush.

"Art waits for no one," she says with a grin, "are you ready, Ezra Bridger?"

"Yeah," Ezra says with a shaky grin as he glances the empty sun. "Yeah, I am."

* * *

 4. _de mortuis ni nisi bonum_ : def.: "nothing must be said about the dead except the good."

* * *

 It's another week and another hunt for a Rebel base that isn't nigh on uninhabitable, have citizens who want to turn them over to the Empire, or has something to eat.

Naturally, this planet is none of the above.

The _entire_ planet is made of craggy, rocky mountains with stubborn shrubs clinging on here and there. It's got some sort of strange creature that's almost Ezra's height but has horns, coarse white fur, and likes to bite. And spit. And head-butt. The natives (a couple thousand on a planet _three times_ the size of Lothal, that really said something about this place) called them "go-ats." With the mountains plus the wind, it was by luck and Hera that they'd made it down here alive.

A little motion sick, but still alive.

Zeb, however, is having a great time. Apparently, this Lasan had had some of the highest peaks in the galaxy. Lasats, Zeb explained, were naturally suited to climbing.

Ezra, by the way, isn't. So, he's not really having fun having to hike all the way up the top of a mountain that was less like a mountain and more like a tiny pole made of stone teetering in the wind five hundred feet above the surface.

Zeb remedied this by having Ezra ride on his back. Zeb's managed to shimmy them off this spire and onto some sort of plateau, where they can see the _Ghost_ far down below looking more like a toy than a spaceship.

"Y'know," Zeb says as he stretches out on the plateau, squinting out over the planet's dusky pink skies, "on Lasan, we always told stories about the dead. Everything important, y'pass on from mother to daughter, father to son…there used to be great operas, on Lasan, music and plays 'n stuff…all we did was tell stories. That's how y'keep people living. The elders used to say that the real deaths are when people die in our memories."

Ezra is silent, sitting cross-legged near the edge of the plateau. He'd never heard Zeb talk about Lasan before.

"Y'wanna talk about it?" Zeb asks as sits down next to Ezra, feet dangling off the side of the plateau.

"Not really," Ezra says quietly. "Not right now."

"Alright, then," Zeb says with shrug. 

They sit, for a long while, up until they see the sun bow behind the mountains, allowing the stars to take center stage. It's when Hera calls, voice crackling across the comm, that Ezra quietly says:

"Thanks."

* * *

 5. _contra vim mortis non crescit herbs in hortis_ : def.: "no herb grows in the gardens against the power of death."

* * *

 It takes Ezra a couple of weeks, but he finally figures out what's wrong.

It's Chopper.

Now, there are a number of things wrong with Chopper, including his rusting gears and his sociopathy, this is a little more specific. Ever since Ezra got back from Lothal, Chopper's been…following him. Watching him. Doing any number of things to make him paranoid.

Ezra finally figures it out when cleaning out Chopper's servomotors. Chopper's usually complaining - loudly - about how he's doing it wrong, he's too slow, what's wrong with his servomotors in the first place, get on with it, whatever. But this time, he's quiet. 

And something finally clicks.

"You can't fix me, buddy," Ezra says quietly as he tightens up that last loose screws. 

Chopper beeps out a question.

"It doesn't work like that," Ezra struggles to explain, "I don't just wake up…I dunno, healed, one day. I just gotta keep going."

Chopper's silent for a moment before he asks one last question.

"Yeah, Chop," Ezra answers with a slight, sad smile. "I'm gonna be okay."

* * *

 +1. _mortui vivos docent_ : def.: "the dead teach the living."

* * *

 "The kid's gone crazy," Zeb announces as he crouches the shallow water.

"Stop that, Zeb," Ezra complains, "you're twisting it!"

"Definitely crazy," Sabine agrees as Kanan looks up to sky like he's praying for guidance, patience, or sanity. Maybe all three.

The _Ghost_ crew minus Chopper - who's on the banks of the shallow pond cackling at them - are all kneeling in a circle in a small pond, boots off and pants rolled up, long pieces of grass held between them as Ezra scrambling around, splashing all of them, trying to string more pieces of grass through them the grid the rest were holding together.

The Rebellion had finally settled on Dantooine, a planet in the Mid Rim a little like Lothal with large, grassy plains, but minus a farming and human population due to the occasional acid rain storms and poisonous sea water. Otherwise, it was a perfectly nice planet with sunny blue skies and a reasonable climate.

Just as the crew had finally found sometime to relax had Ezra barged into the _Ghost_ , arms laden with the three-foot-long green grasses and announced they were going to make a rug.

No one was quite sure how they had been talked into this, but here they were.

"I didn't even know you knew how to weave," Hera remarks, looking like the only person not disturbed by this in the slightest.

Ezra snorts, waving a hand as he deftly knots a grass onto the grid with other one. "Of course I do. It's tradition on Lothal."

"It is?" Kanan asks, surprised.

"Yeah," Ezra says and Zeb's a little bit impressed by how the kid barely needs to look to know how to string which pieces through where, which to knot, which to cut, and which to duck under another piece. "The ancient people of Lothal used the grasses to weave…well, anything they needed, really. But it's still tradition to make rugs or pots for weddings and birthdays and stuff. Rugs are easier, though."

"Okay," Sabine says with a slight frown. "Why are we in a pond?"

"You have to weave it underwater to make it airtight."

"So," Kanan says, looking like he's suddenly caught on to something. "It's traditional for funerals?"

"Um, yeah," Ezra ducks his head, his voice coming out a little muffled as he continues his work, "each piece of grass is supposed to represent a memory, or a person - you say a name or a memory - and you sew into something that will last forever. They really do last forever," he continues, voice cracking a little, "my mother had one that had been made, like, six hundred years ago, and - "

"Ezra," Kanan interrupts, "why don't you sit down here and show me how to do it?"

"But you'll mess it up!" Ezra protests.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Kanan says wryly. 

"Fine," Ezra relents, "once the base is complete, I'll show you."

Once the base is complete - and it looks like the mat is going to be at least ten feet long - Ezra anchors Kanan's part of the mat before he show him how to push and pull one piece of grass, horizontal from the rest of the mat without breaking it. Soon enough, Kanan can do it by himself, albeit much slower than Ezra, and Ezra's returned to Kanan's place.

"This is really great, Ezra," Sabine says enthusiastically. "It's a type of art - can I go after Kanan?"

"Sure," Ezra says with a bit of an embarrassed shrug.

"Have you always been able to weave so fast?" Hera asks, curious.

Ezra shrugs again. "I've been practicing the past few days. It helped, though, once I got the coms tower to be able to make my own pots and mats and stuff."

"By yourself?" Zeb asks, 'cause this mat is _huge_ and not a one-kid job.

"Takes a while, but it's possible."

Slowly but surely do they settle into a pace, each person taking turns with the weaving, some better than others. Zeb's claws are great for weaving but Sabine's used to delicate machinery, while Hera's got the smallest hands for the job and Kanan's patient (enough). There is a rhythm, though, and sometimes Ezra hears someone whisper a name: too many from Kanan and Zeb to count, Hera's names mostly sharing her own last name, and only one or two from Sabine.

When they're done, the rug is _huge,_ spreading out in a circle at least twelve feet, and Ezra assures them that golden grasses of Lothal aren't really anything compared to Dantooine's green grasses, but it will do. Kanan beckons Ezra and the two gently lift it out of the pond using the Force. Hera promises that once it dries they'll attach it to the floor of the _Ghost's_ common room, but is a little worried for how long it will last.

"Airtight," Ezra reminds her with a grin, "and waterproof."

"Wait," Zeb demands, "how'd it get waterproof?"

"Lothalian secret, foreigner," Ezra says loftily, before ducking as Zeb takes a swipe. He pops back up, grinning as Kanan's rolling his eyes in exasperation. "Besides, even if doesn't last forever, well, memories do…" Ezra clears his throat, looking like he feels a little silly, before continuing, "we can always make another."

 


End file.
